It was pretty exciting being promoted
from the bullgang to the dump-truck.
Okay, it really wasn't so much a promotion
as a rotation with everyone else,
but as I looked up that orange
City of Seattle engineering truck,
it looked about two stories high
and darn exciting.
Not that I didn't like digging ditches
out of the Haller Lake office.
I certainly didn't have to count calories
or do my Jane Fonda tape!
I had to eat like a horse just to keep
big enough for those long days of endless ditches.
So after three months,
I was finally assigned a dump-truck
with my buddy Debbie.
We had both been recruited from the
City of Seattle park department
custodian pool to the engineering department
because in 1978, Seattle mayor, Wes Ulman,
had been given the federal mandate to put
women in traditional male jobs.
The male jobs paid better than most
of the secretarial jobs and many of us
women were ready to get dirty
for the big cash.
When Debbie and I were assigned the same
dump-truck, with Jim, we were delighted!
We took turns riding shotgun
and from way up high in that truck you
could SEE EVERYTHING for miles and miles.
Our week rotated daily with Monday and Tuesday
being odd job days.
We'd stand in the Haller Lake hallway
each morning with our driver and the boss
would hand him our orders
and off we'd go!
We could be picking up sod from the bull-gang
ditch diggers, or filling in potholes or hauling brush
to the transfer station...
The transfer station!
The Wallingford transfer station was a place we visited
most days but rarely got out of the truck.
Jim would just back in and make the dump.
But every Wednesday, we had a LONG garbage run
that ended in Wallingford.
We'd start in Ballard at 15NW and 85th NW
and sweep all the sidewalks.
Then we'd cruise down the hill to Golden Gardens
park to the flat section below the bluff.
Debbie and I walked that entire meadow
from the north to the south end
with those long-handled garbage spearing poles
and trash sacks while Jim waited in the truck.
Then we'd pick up all the trash from the park restrooms
and do the shoulders around the
Hiram H. Chittendon locks.
It took about four hours and then we'd hit the transfer station
for lunch. Jim had twenty years at the City
so he wanted to eat lunch with all his cronies.
We'd climb down from our huge truck and
follow him across the huge building
and up the stairs.
Now a transfer station is where all the garbage goes
before it is loaded up in containers
to be hauled out to the dumps in outlying areas
and they smell BAD.
Debbie and I would follow him up a long staircase
to the upper level where the lunchroom was located
and sit along the tables with the garbagemen.
They were always excited to us
because we were the first women ever hired for that job.
We were strong and buff from months of work
and Debbie and I were both genial people.
We were a good crew for Jim because he was
one of the most jovial people I have ever worked
with in my entire life!
Those garbage men were so friendly and funny
but boy did they smell bad.
I mean really bad.
Even inside the lunchroom with the door closed
that lunchroom just reeked like garbage.
It took us a few weeks to learn how to
eat and not smell at the same time
and then we looked forward to
bullshitting with our new friends every Wednesday.
It was the stinkiest place I ever ate lunch.
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